Schiavo says he didn't consider divorcing brain-damaged wife

March 27, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- Despite pleas from the Vatican, U.S. lawmakers and the president, Michael Schiavo says he could not have divorced his brain-damaged wife and given up the fight to let her die. "I was doing something that Terri wanted. And I couldn't give it up on her," Schiavo said in an interview recorded for the Sunday edition of NBC's "Dateline." Schiavo's book about the case, "Terri: The Truth," is scheduled for release today, the day before a competing book by Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, is released. Friday will be the first anniversary of Terri Schiavo's death, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. Michael Schiavo fought the Schindlers in court for eight years over removal of his spouse's life support, arguing she would not have wanted to be kept alive in what doctors called a persistent vegetative state. An autopsy determined Terri Schiavo suffered irreversible brain-damage and even blindness after she collapsed in 1990 at the age of 26. No evidence was found that she might have been abused before her collapse.